MARLBORO- Ticks on Hogback? Nope. Connor Hunt recently shared the report he submitted about his tick-mouse-Lyme disease research based at Hogback. As a student at Lyndon State College, Hunt participated in a statewide 10-year project to collect information about the distribution of ticks bearing Lyme disease. How to find ticks? Catch mice. Hunt live-trapped mice near the summit of Hogback in the fall of 2015. He captured 31 small mammals (not all of them mice) and inspected them for ticks. How many ticks did he find? None. Zero. Not a one.

In the spring, high season for ticks, Hunt’s advisor, Lyndon State professor Dr. Alan Giese, did a “cloth drag” along a mile and a half of Hogback trails and forest edges. How many did he find? One.

As a young man I logged and spent most of my summers in the woods falling timber all around and throughout the valley and I was chest deep in pucker brush often and never had a tick on me...summers were shorter and cooler then.

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